Proposed US Senate bill seeks further study of violent game effects

Senator sees study as potential groundwork for further congressional action.

Since last Friday's tragic school shooting in Connecticut, increased attention on violence in video games has begun to work its way into the US Senate. This week, Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) proposed a bill directing the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to study the effects of violent video games on children.

According to a draft proposal of the bill obtained by Politico, Rockefeller wants the NAS to specifically look at whether exposure to violent games "causes children to act aggressively or causes other measurable cognitive harm to children; has a disproportionately harmful effect on children already prone to aggressive behavior; and has a harmful effect that is distinguishable from any negative effects produced by other types of media." The bill further aims to determine whether any potential effects are long-lasting. The study would look at "video programming" in general, presumably covering TV and movies in the same rubric, but the bill also seeks to find out whether "video games' interactive nature and the extraordinarily personal and vivid way violence might be portrayed in such video games" makes the medium "unique."

Existing studies have yielded inconclusive and polarizing results regarding the impact of violent gameplay on children's behavior. While some researchers claim to see statistically significant increases in aggressive behavior and decreased prosocial behavior among child gamers across the literature, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that "any demonstrated effects are both small and indistinguishable from effects produced by other media" in a landmark ruling granting video games full First Amendment protections last year.

A proposed draft is far from a passed bill, of course, but Rockefeller is not alone among his colleagues in using the shooting as a reason to put renewed focus on video games. "I think we need to do everything possible we can to prevent such tragedies, including addressing the culture of violence that may be spawned by video games," Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told Politico.

"Very often, these young men have had an almost hypnotic involvement in some form of violence in our entertainment culture, particularly violent video games, and then they obtain guns and become not just troubled young men but mass murderers," Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) added. Lieberman has previously pushed for federal involvement in the game rating system.

While police have yet to release any details about the media consumption habits of shooter Adam Lanza, various reports from those close to the Lanza family claim he played titles such as Call of Duty, StarCraft, and Warcraft III.

Even if the proposed NAS study comes to pass, it seems unlikely that Congress would move to put any actual restrictions on the sale or use of video games in the wake of last year's Supreme Court decision. But Rockefeller, for one, seems undeterred from that very aim.

"Recent court decisions demonstrate that some people still do not get it," Rockefeller said in a statement. "They believe that violent video games are no more dangerous to young minds than classic literature or Saturday morning cartoons. Parents, pediatricians, and psychologists know better. These court decisions show we need to do more and explore ways Congress can lay additional groundwork on this issue."

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area.